About Immigration Policy

The mission of the Department of Homeland Security, which was established in 2002, is to protect the country from a variety of threats, including terrorism and natural catastrophes (DHS, 2017). DHS was created by combining 22 distinct government departments and organizations into a single Department. DHS has a wide range of responsibilities, but its core goal is to protect America. DHS is dedicated to offering the American people higher-quality services, fostering innovation, and upholding security. The department works to improve its performance through the development of leadership, effectiveness, accountability, and transparency. DHS has components dealing with immigration, namely; U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), U.S- VISIT, (DHS, 2017).

Description of the Program Being Assessed

U.S Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS)

USCIS is an agency of the government that is mandated in overseeing legal immigration to the U.S. (USCIS, 2017). USCIS was created in the year 2003 with a responsibility of the immigration services functions of the federal government. The agency came into existence after Furthermore, USCIS was formed as a component of Department of Homeland Security to ensure and enhance security as well as improving the efficiency of national immigration services by entirely focusing on administrating of benefit applications (USCIS, 2017).

Primarily, USCIS is funded by the fees charged to petitioners and applicants by immigration and naturalization. The organizations and individuals making immigration benefit applications are required to deposit the fees into the Immigration Examination Fee Account and these fees form about 95% of the USCIS total budget. USCIS provides services such as Immigration of Family Members whereby the USCIS manages the process of U.S citizens and permanent residents bringing in their close relatives to live in the US. Also, the USCIS is mandated in managing the process that allows individuals from other countries to work in the U.S on temporal basis as well as obtaining a green card (USCIS, 2017).

More so, an individual who wishes to become a U.S. citizen submits their applications to the USCIS for determination, processing, and approval. USCIS also administer humanitarian programs that ensure the provision of protection of people both in and out of United States especially those faced with challenges such as war, famine and political unrests, as well as those who flee their countries of origin for fear of death and persecution. In addition, the process of adoption of children from other countries by the U.S. citizens is overseen by USCIS. The number of adoptions per year is estimated to be 20,000. USCIS is built on Integrity, Respect, Innovation, and Vigilance as its core values. The said values serve as the administrative ethics in the efforts to efficiently fulfill the day to day activities and overall realization of its vision (USCIS, 2017).

Logical model depiction of the U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services program (USCIS)

-Funding of 411 million in 2016/17

-288 foreign and domestic offices

-Partners (UN, FBI, Governments, CIA, RA’s)

-Legislation and Immigration Laws

-Immigrants information

-Employees (616,620 in 2015)

-Detecting crime

-Naturalizing legal migrants

-Refugee screening and interviews

-Collecting and managing immigrant’s information

-Recruitment and Training of employees

INPUTS

-Well reasoned decision on immigration rendered efficiently, fairly and in accordance with the law, Innovative Immigration processes

-Focusing resources on priorities, results and performance

-Deter crime and fraud, Naturalize new citizens

OUTCOMES

ACTIVITIES

SHORT TERM

-Fulfill international obligation on refugees and affording protection for those who are in need

-Protect rights and security of citizens and immigrants

-Contribute internationally on refugee determination and immigration

MIDIUM TERM

LONG TERM

-Contribute to quality of life and reinforce values that are important to US

-Global collaboration in immigration matters

-Modern management that focuses on results for the Americans

External Influences, Environmental, Related Programs

Source: Adopted and modified from literature review (2017)

Interaction of inputs and activities, to produce observable outcomes

U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) program required a total funding of $411 million to fund its input activities such as fraud prevention and detection, immigration, examinations, operations and support and procurement, construction and improvements in financial year 2016/2017. The program employed and trained a total of 616,620 employees and has a network of roughly 288 foreign and domestic offices to help in the execution of the activities. Other inputs include utilizing services of security agencies such as Federal Bureau of Investigation and Criminal Investigation Agency. More so, the program is guided by immigration laws and information management tools such as E-Verify (USCIS, 2017).

Some of the short-term activities implemented include detecting and deterring fraud and investigating immigration benefits to persons leaving or entering the country. Approximately 39, 000 fraud investigations happened in FY 2015. USCIS naturalizes legal immigrants (MPI, 2017). With the help of resettlement agencies, the program managed to naturalize approximately 730, 685 new citizens in 2015. USCIS carries out refugee screenings and interview across the world with the help of resettlement support centers. Consequently, the program screened and interviewed 66,000 refugees in 67 countries (USCIS, 2017).

To ensure effective stakeholder engagements, the program promotes information sharing and partnership with law enforcement agencies, other government agencies, resettlement agencies and resettlement support centers across the world. Hence, the program ensures a long-term goal of global collaboration in the management of migrations and immigration of persons. In 2015, the program hosted 73 national stakeholder’s meetings and more than 3000 local engagement (USCIS, 2017).

The other activity is aimed at achieving a long-term goal of efficiency and effectiveness of security screening policies, procedures, and program. The program identifies and eliminates systemic vulnerability in the immigration process by engaging the help of trained immigration officials and security agencies such as Federal Bureau of Immigration and Crime Investigation Agencies. The agency collects, analyze and manages immigrants information to detect fraud. As such, approximately 31 million queries were handled in 2014 via the E-Verify program (DHS, 2017).

The activities undertaken by USCIS promote integrity and help deter unauthorized employment and illegal immigration in the long term (USCIS, 2017). Consequently, U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) is able to fulfill humanitarian commitments in line with the international obligations and U.S laws by protecting refugees and asylum seekers (USCIS, 2017).

Analysis of Strengths and Weaknesses of the Design and Functioning of the Program Internal Logic

One of the strengths of the program internal logic is stakeholder engagement. The program involves many stakeholders such as Resettlement Agencies, The U.S government, Federal Bureau of Investigation, United Nations and governments across the world. Through effective stakeholder engagement, the program is widely accepted and supported thus ensuring its success. The partnership also provides a basis for supplementing skills-set or filling gaps in terms of expertise. The stakeholders have a shared vision and capable leadership to facilitate shared conflict management, decision making, and effective communication (USCIS, 2017).

The Department of Homeland Security created an integrated system which enables them to share vital information such as terrorism, criminals that flee and immigration with other countries. In addition, the largest investigative agency, U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) which is in the Department of Homeland Security enforces federal laws. ICE is responsible for returning illegal aliens from all over the world. They are known for capturing the most violent and wanted criminals, which is very helpful to the community (USCIS, 2017).

Besides the strengths, the model has several weaknesses. To ensure effective and efficient implementation of the USCIS, there is a need to employ adequate staff that are competent and of high integrity. With the program being implemented across many countries, the challenge is to get the right candidate through proper human resources procedures (Ariss, 2016). The program faces challenges in recruiting personnel with specialized skills in risk management, program control, engineering, and communication (MPI, 2017).

Lack of adequate funding has seen the US Citizenship and immigration program reduce or in some cases stop some of its programs across the globe (MPI, 2017). Changes in the US administration have led to changes in priorities. The current US government has diverted most of the resources that were allocated to support refugee resettlement to other priority projects (U.S Government, 2017). Since the program was mainly funded by the federal government, it has been forced to cut down some of its activities.

References

Ariss, A. (2016). Comparative international human resource management: Future research directions. Human Resource Management Review 4(26), 352-358.

DHS. (2017). Homeland Security. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from DHS: https://www.dhs.gov/

MPI. (2017, August). Migration Policy Institute. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from United States Immigration: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/us-immigration-policy-program?gclid=Cj0KCQjw95vPBRDVARIsAKvPd3InFaDtsUZ5-G7UhWT0KtGpeSy6egNPYwmafndaGZAoHQwZbhaEH28aAigXEALw_wcB

U.S Government. (2017, October 08). Trump Administration Immigration Policy Priorities. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from The White House: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/10/08/trump-administration-immigration-policy-priorities

USCIS. (2017). U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services. Retrieved October 18, 2017, from Department of Homland Security: https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY2017BIB.pdf